Pirate Bay Ban Has Little Effect on U.K. File Sharing

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A court-ordered blockade of The Pirate Bay in the U.K. has had little effect on overall file-sharing, according to a BBC report.

Citing an unnamed, major U.K. Internet service provider (ISP), the BBC said peer-to-peer (P2P) activity returned to close-to-normal levels shortly after ISPs blocked The Pirate Bay.

P2P activity peaked during The Pirate Bay court hearings thanks to media coverage, but dropped about 11 percent after the blockade, the ISP told the BBC. Now, however, the volume of traffic on P2P sites has returned to pre-ban levels.

According to the BBC, the ISP's figures could be skewed based on figures that can't distinguish what is being downloaded, or from where.

The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), which pursued The Pirate Bay ban in the U.K., has pledged to pursue other P2P bans.

"We intend to bring more such cases," BPI CEO Geoff Taylor said in a July 4 speech. "And we will continue to press Government to create a faster and less costly mechanism for to block such site in the Communications Act White Paper next year."

In a Sunday post on its Facebook page, The Pirate Bay said it has "scattered the servers around the globe so that a shutdown at one place won't be enough to bring the site down."

"Try to sink one and ten new will rise," The Pirate Bay said.

Meanwhile, BitTorrent use has also continued as normal after The Pirate Bay bans, according to a graph compiled by one of Europe's largest ISPs, XS4ALL. In fact, traffic volumes remained consistent, if not higher than before the block was put into place.

Stephanie began as a PCMag reporter in May 2012. She moved to New York City from Frederick, Md., where she worked for four years as a multimedia reporter at the second-largest daily newspaper in Maryland. She interned at Baltimore magazine and graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (in the town of Indiana, in the state of Pennsylvania) with a degree in journalism and mass communications.
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